A CENTRAL CRIMINAL Court jury has been discharged after failing to agree a verdict in the trial of a Derry labourer charged with murdering his pregnant ex-girlfriend.
Stephen Cahoon (37), known to his friends as Stephen Moore, Harvey Street, Derry, admitted strangling mother of four Jean Teresa Quigley, who was 10 weeks pregnant with his son. However he pleaded not guilty to murdering Ms Quigley (30) at her home at Cornshell Fields, Shantallow, Derry, on July 26th, 2008.
The seven women and five men of the jury had been given the option of reaching a majority verdict of either murder or manslaughter following the 2½-week trial. However, after almost eight hours of deliberating yesterday, they told Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy they could not reach an agreement. The judge told them to write “disagree” on the issue paper and discharged them from jury service for 10 years.
The case was then put back into the court list, with the father of one facing retrial.
Ms Quigley’s mother, who found her daughter’s bruised body, broke down and was comforted by her other four children as she left court. She had discovered her daughter lying in blood on her bed.
The trial made legal history. Cahoon was charged under the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act of 1976 and was given the option of being tried in Dublin or in Northern Ireland. He opted for trial in Dublin and became the first person to be tried under the Act before a jury in the Republic.
The 1976 Act was brought in to allow for trials in the Republic for offences committed outside the jurisdiction in Northern Ireland or Britain. It has rarely been used and up until now the only cases have been brought before the three-judge, non-jury Special Criminal Court, which deals with terrorist offences.
The trial had heard that Ms Quigley had broken up with Cahoon, whom she had begun dating on St Patrick’s Day.
The jury saw text messages she sent him in the days before her death in which she described him as a “nutter” and told him she wanted him out of her life. However, Cahoon said in evidence Ms Quigley could say one thing and mean another.
He said he went to Ms Quigley’s house at about 2am that Saturday to pay her £150 for two dogs they had bought.
He said the taxi driver was mistaken when he said Cahoon had a hold-all with him on the way to the house. He claimed he asked the taxi to stop at the end of Ms Quigley’s road because he felt sick, not so that he wouldn’t be seen, as the prosecution had suggested.
Cahoon said she let him in her two front doors. He could not explain why the internal door was damaged and appeared to have been forced when police arrived that evening.
He told the court a row developed and Ms Quigley began screaming that the child was not his and that she would have an abortion. “I snapped,” he said. “I just grabbed her by the throat. I wanted her to be quiet.” He said he didn’t mean to kill her when he pressed down on her neck for about a minute.
“She just riled me up,” he said, introducing the defence of provocation, which can reduce murder to manslaughter. He could not explain why her head, body, arms and legs were covered in bruises.
He denied gagging her with a sock found covered in her saliva. He said he used it after he strangled her to clean the blood and “frothy stuff” coming out of her mouth before giving her CPR.
He said when the CPR did not work, he “went for a piss” and left. He blamed panic for his locking her inside the house. He booked a taxi from a bus shelter, using a friend’s name. He was arrested in Donegal town about 10 days later.